Over Religious Parents Quotes & Sayings

for religious parents, passing on their own beliefs and values is generally an uncomplicated, straightforward endeavor. Religious parents typically find it a joy and duty to simply pass on their own religious beliefs and traditions. They don't worry about unduly influencing their children's belief system. Quite the opposite - you actively seek to influence your children's beliefs in accordance with your religious faith. But many secular parents see this very process of passing on one's religion to one's kids as a form of indoctrination. They see religious faith as something that is directly and unfairly imposed on kids. They view young children as intellectually vulnerable, willing and perhaps even evolutionarily designed to believe almost anything their parents teach them about the nature of the world. — Phil Zuckerman

The world is not religious because religion is imposed upon us. The parents are in a hurry to impose; the church, the state, the country - everybody is in a hurry to impose a certain religion on the child. How foolish! How stupid! Religion needs maturity, great understanding, before one can choose. — Rajneesh

Parents don't have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and Parenthood so utterly beautiful: the All or nothing wager. The Faith. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Religion is a personal, private matter and parents, not public school officials, should decide their children's religious training. We should not have teacher-led prayers in public schools, and school officials should never favor one religion over another, or favor religion over no religion (or vice versa). I also believe that schools should not restrict students' religious liberties. The free exercise of faith is the fundamental right of every American, and that right doesn't stop at the schoolhouse door. — George W. Bush

I'm not like a religious exerciser. My parents go down to the gym everyday now, and I'm the one that stays upstairs. But I definitely need to start exercising. — Mark Indelicato

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel. — Chinua Achebe

My girlfriend has the greatest story as to why she isn't religious anymore. When she was a kid, like 12 years old, her parents nailed a 25 pound crucifix to the wall right above her bed. About two weeks later, in the middle of the night, the crucifix falls off the wall and leaves a two inch gash in the back of her dad's head. — Anthony Jeselnik

Many political scientists used to assume that people vote selfishly, choosing the candidate or policy that will benefit them the most. But decades of research on public opinion have led to the conclusion that self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences. Parents of children in public school are not more supportive of government aid to schools than other citizens; young men subject to the draft are not more opposed to military escalation than men too old to be drafted; and people who lack health insurance are not more likely to support government-issued health insurance than people covered by insurance.35 Rather, people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political. The political scientist Don Kinder summarizes the findings like this: "In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not 'What's in it for me?' but rather 'What's in it for my group?' "36 Political opinions function as "badges of social membership."37 — Jonathan Haidt

My poor family. I try to protect them from my work. My parents are very religious, and my brother and sister are very normal. We have an understanding, I think, that what I do isn't quite down their alley. — Alissa Nutting

My parents were very religious. My mother came from Co Donegal to work in the shirt factory in Derry when she met my father. — Martin McGuinness

Parents have no right to impose their religion on their children ... A Fundamentalist Protestant parent has no right to expect the state to support his own narrow conception of education. — Paul Kurtz

I was raised into the Romanian Orthodox culture by my parents, and most notably my mother, who is a profoundly religious and spiritual woman. — Dominique Moceanu

That happens a lot when people become parents, too. There's just so much at stake suddenly, and you're also witness to the total miracle of birth, and stuff like that. So I started reading tons of religious texts and checking everything out. One of the things I wanted to make sure of on the record is that it still has a "searching" vibe rather than an authoritative vibe. — Mason Jennings

The community in Utah was very religious. I was a typical teenage girl trying to find my sexuality. Unfortunately, girls do use their sexuality to find attention. I also understand why parents want to protect their kids. — Julianne Hough

Boy lovers and the lesbians who have young lovers ... are not child molesters. The child abusers are priests, teachers, therapists, cops and parents who force their staid morality onto the young people in their custody. — Patrick Califia

Dad and Mom had a lesbian couple living in our chalet for several years in the early 1970s. One was Dad's secretary, the other Mom's helper. They shared a room. Fortunately, my parents were hypocritical and acted as if, no matter their official religious absolutes, the higher call was to ignore what the Bible said in favor of what they hoped it meant. Thus, without ever saying it, it seems to me my parents were affirming that the Bible should be read as if Jesus was the only lens through which to see God. The result was that Francis and Edith Schaeffer were nicer than their official theology. — Frank Schaeffer

It [an ethical problem with in vitro fertilization] depends on whether you're talking ethics from the standpoint of some religious denomination or from just truly religious people. The Jewish or Catholic faiths, for example, have their own rules. But just religious people, who will make very devoted parents, have no problem with in vitro fertilization. — Patrick Steptoe

Each boy's socialization is unique. Even two siblings close in age do not learn identical values. Culture is thus transmitted on a continuum. In a culture that is fairly religious, for example, some children will grow up to be devout believers; others will reject the faith completely; and most will fall in with the average level of religious observance for their community. Where a child will land on this continuum partly depends on how strong a set of messages he or she receives from the social environment and partly on his or her personal predispositions. The family rebel, for example, might become an atheist, while the child who is most focused on pleasing the parents might become even more religious than they are. — Lundy Bancroft

If you are born in 1564, your dislocation from your parents' experience is very profound. You are the first generation who will have had all your religious experience in English, the first to have a countryman circumnavigate the globe. All the power and economic structures of the world are changing around you. — Neil MacGregor

Ah, cruel parents indeed, who neglect the religious education of their children; more cruel in some respects than Herod; he slew the bodies of children, these murder souls; he murdered the children of others, these murder their own; he employed the agency of his servants, these do the work of slaughter themselves. — John Angell James

I remember being forced to go to Sunday school for a number of years, even though my parents were not religious. No one was really religious; it was just the framework. There was no passion for it. No passion for anything. Just a quiet, kind of floaty, kind of semi-oppressive, blank palette that youre living in. — Tim Burton

Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, you are that because of where and when you were born. If you are an atheist, you are that because of a book or two you read, or who your parents were and the century in which you were born. Don't delude yourself: there are no good reasons for anything, just circumstances. Don't delude yourself: you may describe yourself to others by claiming a label of atheist, Jew, evangelical, gay or straight but you know that you are really lots more complicated than that, a gene-driven primate and something more. Want to be sure you have THE TRUTH about yourself and want to be consistent to that truth? Then prepare to go mad. Or prepare to turn off your brain and cling to some form or other of fundamentalism, be that religious or secular. — Frank Schaeffer

I have never seen an Amity religious ceremony before. I am only familiar with the religion of my parents' faction, which part of me still holds to and the other rejects as foolishness - the prayers before dinner, the weekly meetings, the acts of service, the poems about a selfless God. This is something different, something mysterious. — Veronica Roth

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment? — Helen Fielding

The problem with the evangelical homeschool movement was not their desire to educate their children at home, or in private religious schools, but the evangelical impulse to "protect" children from ideas that might lead them to "question" and to keep them cloistered in what amounted to a series of one-family gated communities. — Frank Schaeffer

The abyss beyond our beliefs is something we have to pass through in order to see the world anew, to see it in terms not dictated so much by our culture, our parents, or our religious convictions. — Sam Keen

The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become creators, incompetent, accidental and partial creators, no doubt, but creators none the less. It is their inescapable duty, and, with luck, their occasional delight to care and watch over their creations; even if this creative power is partly illusory because chromosomes and chance decide the whole business, parents cannot act as if it is illusory; they cannot sincerely believe in their ultimate helplessness. They must behave like shepherds, however clumsy, and not like sheep, however well trained.
The Sermon on the Mount is a wonderful, intoxicating sermon. But it is a sermon for bachelors. — Ferdinand Mount

When I was a child, my society lifted me up - though education primarily, as well as through other kinds of cultural stimulation. It wasn't just my parents or my religious community. The entire society lifted me up to the bottom rung of the ladder. Then they said, "Girl, it's up to you whether or not you climb." I don't have a problem with that. I think that is the best way to go about living. — Marianne Williamson

That the idea of God represents the conscience, the internalized admonitions and threats from parents and educators, is a well-known fact. What is less well known is the fact that, from an energy point of view, the belief in and the fear of God are sexual excitations which have changed their content and goal. The religious feeling, then, is the same as sexual feeling, except that it is attached to mystical, psychic contents. This explains the return of the sexual element in so many ascetic experiences, such as the nun's delusion that she is the bride of Christ. Such experiences rarely reach the stage of genital consciousness and thus are apt to take place in other sexual channels, such as masochistic martyrdom. — Wilhelm Reich

Education ought everywhere to be religious education. Parents are bound to employ no instructors who will instruct their children religiously. To commit children to the care of irreligious persons is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves. — Timothy Dwight V

Every public elementary school ought to welcome Good News Clubs. Parents appreciate them; children love them; and the First Amendment protects them. The First Amendment requires that similar groups be provided with equal treatment. Religious speech is not a disability. It is our preeminent freedom. — Mathew Staver

I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey. — Cory Booker

I think it's a mother's dream come true to see it work out that way. Not just the mother, but certainly parents, to know that their children have a very solid moral foundation and religious foundation. — Erika Slezak

Do you have children, Dominick?"
"Nope."
"Well if you did," she said, "you would most likely read them not only Curious George but also fables and fairy tales. Stories where humans outsmart witches, where giants and ogres are felled and good triumphs over evil. Your parents read them to you and your brother. Did they not?"
"My mother did," I said.
"Of course she did. It is the way we teach our children to cope with a world too large and chaotic for them to comprehend. A world that seems, at times, too random. Too indifferent. Of course, the religions of the world will do the same for you, whether you're a Hindu or a Christian or a Rosicrucian. They're brother and sister, really; children's fables and religious parables ... — Wally Lamb

Spirituality and faith are at the core of who I am. I was born to deeply religious parents who were able to give me that rock solid foundation in the church and in my faith which really has served me so well. — Condoleezza Rice

I had to really kill off all the religious myths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life - it's excruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain, the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment. — John Lennon